© Reuters. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks through the United Nations Local weather Change Convention COP28, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, December 2, 2023. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky
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By Richard Valdmanis, Sarah McFarlane and Simon Jessop
DUBAI (Reuters) -U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris sought to assert the mantle of worldwide local weather management for america on Saturday in a speech to the COP28 summit, itemizing a slew of initiatives to chop emissions and harness renewable power on this planet’s largest oil and fuel producer.
The handle got here on the second day of back-to-back speeches by world leaders on the convention in Dubai, the place almost 200 nations are hashing out a global method to tackling international warming and debating whether or not fossil fuels ought to keep a job in a future power economic system.
“Two years ago, President Joe Biden stood on stage at COP26 and made a declaration of ambition: The United States of America will once again be a global leader in the fight against the climate crisis,” Harris stated. “Since then, the United States has turned ambition into action.”
She listed the greater than $400 billion in subsidies supplied by the 2022 Inflation Discount Act, Biden’s signature local weather legislation, which has triggered a flood of unpolluted power funding. She additionally introduced a brand new $3 billion pledge to the Inexperienced Local weather Fund, which helps growing nations fight international warming.
On the sidelines of the convention, america additionally unveiled new measures to curb emissions of the highly effective greenhouse fuel methane from oil and fuel operations.
“Today, we are demonstrating through action how the world can and must meet this crisis,” Harris stated.
The US, the world’s second largest greenhouse fuel emitter behind China, has seen a surge in funding for clear power tasks starting from photo voltaic farms to wind generators and electrical car battery factories lately.
However it has additionally grown into the globe’s largest producer of oil and fuel – the principle supply of local weather emissions – following a technology-driven drilling increase within the sprawling Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.
That awkward coincidence underscores one in every of COP28’s most contentious questions: Can the world’s response to local weather change contain persevering with use of fossil fuels?
Among the many choices nations should make will probably be whether or not to agree, for the primary time, to step by step “phase out” fossil fuels and substitute them with renewable power sources.
Harris informed the convention that america helps phasing out of “unabated coal” use, however she didn’t point out different fossil fuels.
The COP28 host, OPEC-member United Arab Emirates, hopes to promote a imaginative and prescient of a low-carbon future that features, not shuns, fossil fuels – primarily by way of using applied sciences that may seize carbon dioxide to maintain it from the environment, or by making oil and fuel operations cleaner.
FOSSIL FIRMS VOW TO DECARBONISE OPERATIONS
The UAE on Saturday introduced a dedication by 50 power companies representing round 40% of worldwide oil output to chop methane emissions from their operations to close zero by 2030, and remove all greenhouse emissions from their operations by 2050.
U.S. oil main Exxon Mobil (NYSE:) and Saudi Arabia’s Aramco (TADAWUL:) had been among the many firms that joined the initiative, though each already had these targets in place through their membership of the Oil and Gasoline Local weather Initiative (OGCI).
Local weather campaigners had been skeptical of the pledges.
“Net zero commitments that haven’t been backed up by plans and aren’t anchored in government regulation are not worth celebrating. We need to be moving from pledges to regulation,” stated Catherine Abreu, founding father of the non-profit Vacation spot Zero.
“We’ve seen a long history of oil companies making climate pledges that don’t result in real action.”
John Podesta, a senior power advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, informed Reuters on Saturday that report U.S. manufacturing was serving to to maintain client costs regular after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He added that america has tried to cut back drilling on public lands and waters, however has been pushed again by courts, and that U.S. coverage was now primarily centered on limiting demand for petroleum.
“We’re in a context in which we need to reduce production of fossil fuels and … we need to be on a path of lower consumption. Our policies are aimed at doing that,” he stated.
The convention on Saturday additionally featured a slew of worldwide offers to make power methods extra climate-friendly around the globe, together with by boosting renewable sources and nuclear power, and by choking off financing for coal.
Elsewhere, america was amongst a gaggle of 56 nations to decide to steps to speed up decarbonisation by 2030 throughout sectors together with energy, street transport, metal, hydrogen and agriculture.
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